Nine and Eleven
by KimDavenport
Summary: History seems to be seperated from the present, lived and forgotten. When the Lab Rats learn how a past event effected a family they thought they knew however, they discover a new respect for the past along with family secrets. Rated T for death. One-shot.


"It was truly one the greatest tragedies ever to befall the American country." finished Mr. Berstien, slowly closing his large brown book and pushing his owl-like reading glasses further up to the bridge of his slightly oily nose. His tweed coat and wispy comb-over made him look like a very solemn Sherlock as he rose from his seat at the head of the classroom.

The drama of the moment was lost, however, on the slightly dazy and extremely unfocused students before him. Staring up at their professor with a vacant look in their eyes, they appeared to be shadows of lost souls, almost demon-like in their demeanor, as though they had nothing to see and nothing to say; nothing at all preoccupying their minds. Had they been told they were to be sentenced to the burning gates of hell he doubted they would even flinch while in the drone-like state.

That was, until the school bell rang. The crystal-like clattering of the modern bell rung out through the sleepy fog, seeming to suddenly transport endless amounts of energy into the occupants of the many classrooms, who had, only moments ago, been frozen as though held in a form of suspended animation. Where breathing, heartbeat, and digestion had all happened in a slight cycle, and the various professors had spoken on and on about various topics seemingly without termination.

Not now though! No, the energy that pulsed through the room now in a rising level of excitement and expectation was at a peak to rival Leo's energy transference. The student's faces where alive now. Their eyes held a mixture of different emotions in them; each one unique and tantalizing in it's own way. Now they looked as though the idea of being thrown into a burning hellhole would cause some facial reaction. Although the poor teacher didn't know whether it would rival any sense into the hormonal teens, as he forcefully tugged apart two eager individuals of the opposite gender who where busily engaging in some tongue fencing battles, and threw a male protective contraption which had been laying on the floor into a nearby trashcan with a tone of disgust.

"Don't forget your reports! Due next Monday! I want complete sentences and don't forget to use a spell-checker when you've finished!" called Mr. Berstien hopelessly over the roaring ocean of student bodies. The seething masses could have been mimicking a heard of rampaging buffalo exactly, right down to the pushing a grunting that was exhibited from the lesser immature ones of the species.

Bree Davenport extracted herself from contact with her fellow creatures with the aid of some bionic ability, and traipsed her way over to her locker.

Her nerdy brother and his shrimpy little sidekick were already there, awaiting her arrival so they could all walk home together.

"But I'm telling you, if you just added some lasers our robot would look so much cooler!"

"You don't need cool looks, Leo! I already told you, it's the quality and superiority of the core design that will make a great robot; not a bunch of supercilious sidekick special effects."

The younger of the two rolled his eyes at the geeky explanation coming from the highly intelligent bionic.

"Hey losers," extended Bree, greeting her brothers with her usual form of welcome.

"Well look who finally decided to show up. What took you so long? We've been waiting here for hours!" Leo was irked at his sister's refusal to adjourn at their designated meeting place at the punctuality he expected from bionic superhuman.

"It couldn't have been more then five minutes."

The young teen scoffed at the indecency of his sister to at least look a slight bit guilty at having them delay at her expense.

"Well it _felt_ like hours!' He deftly defended himself. Bree contained a moment of laughter to herself at her stepbrother exceeding impatience. Pulling out her required books for homework and replacing her unneeded texts back into her locker, she hunched her shoulders slightly and forced the edges of her mouth down so he would not know she had been laughing at him. The youngest of the group could be sensitive at times.

Slamming her locker shut, Bree spun around and confronted her two siblings.

"Okay, I'm ready to go. Where's Adam?"

Chase and Leo looked at each other with a mildly confused expression. "He said he was in going to collect hair for his Taj Mahair," answered Chase at last. "I'm not really sure what that means and I don't really want to know."

Bree felt her pupils gravitating to the top of her lids in a very exaggerated eye roll at the gross antics of her relations.

"We're home!" exclaimed Adam in a loud voice once he busted through the front door of the Davenport mansion.

"Shh!" exclaimed Tasha angrily as soon as the sound waves left their old brother's mouth.

"Wow great Tasha, nice to see you too," stated Adam sarcastically as he passed by her, tossing his backpack onto the sofa and heading straight for his nice old fried; the refrigerator.

"Donald is in a meeting with some new clients," Tasha explained in a hushed voice to the remaining children. "He wants complete silence while he's talking so all of you go down to the lab and do your homework! Get! Get!"

The middle-aged reporter could put on quite a ferocious face when she really put her mind to it, and in no time she had chased her children out of the kitchen and down to their hidden elevator.

Their brilliant tech-mogul father was heading straight towards the elevator as the children stepped into the lab, and nearly bummed into them in his haste. His hands were full of shinny new gadgets which the children could only guess he was planning to show to his newest hope-to-be clientele.

"Oh, sorry kids, I didn't see you there." Donald Davenport took a small step back and let them pass.

Bree couldn't bee sure, but she thought she heard Chase give a small huff of disgust as he passed his uncle. She did not have to wonder what her younger brother was upset about. Just last week the three of them had learned that Donald was not their real father; and that he had been lying to them their whole lives. The shock seemed to come worse to Chase then the other two, as he considered himself the smartest man in the world. Chase was upset Donald would not share something like that with his intellectual equal, and was equally mad that Chase himself had not been able to discover the secret for himself in all the years they had been living with Donald.

Chase's attitude had been on the tipping edge of disaster ever sense then, but it seemed to come to a boiling point right before their eyes as the teens exited the elevator. He rounded on his so-called father with fire in his eyes.

"Yeah, I'm not surprised. You're to self-absorbed in yourself to notice anything or anyone else beyond your own desires," he snapped.

Donald took a step back. Adam looked shocked. Leo just stared open-mouthed at his brother.

"Chase, calm down," stated Bree, the only who knew they needed to talk Chase down before he got any angrier. Once he was on a roll, it was always harder to cool him off.

'Don't tell me to calm down!" shouted Chase, fart past the point of easy return. How had he gotten angry so fast? Bree guessed that most of his anger had been bottled up until now, and once the cap was off it wasn't hard to get the flow up to maximum power.

"He lied to us all. He used us for his own purposes and didn't think to tell of the truth. I WILL NOT CALM DOWN!"

While chase stood there seething, Leo leaned over to his step-fathers ear. "You might want to run before it gets ugly and your clients wonder where you are."

Donald hesitated. He didn't want to leave his sons in such turmoil, but his clients would leave if he didn't get back there. After a moment of thought, and urging from his other children, he regrettably turned and headed upstairs.

"Chase?! What was that up there?!" snapped Bree as the three bionic superhumans and their little step-brother exited the secret elevator leading to the lab.

The second eldest of the crew was looking at her little brother with shock and disappointment written all over her face. "Why would you say something like that to the man who loves and cares for us? Who kept us as his own and saved us from our own, evil, father? We owe him more then we could ever repay!"

"Oh yeah? We owe the guy that lied to us? Manipulated us every step of the way? He wasn't our father; he never was close! Why do you think we 'owe' _him?!_ "

"Because he took care of us!"

"He _used_ us Bree!" snapped chase in such a loud and anger-writhed speech that for a moment Bree was afraid she had angered the second personality hiding beneath her brother's skin.

"He used us for his own ideas! He never wanted to give us a happy childhood! To raise us as his own! He just wanted to make us into his minions to control! To keep as his own fighting squad down here in the wretched basement! He used us for his own selfish acts!"

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Adam appeared at his brother's side, landing a hard hit behind his brother's head. It was such a powerful punch that Chase stumbled for a second, unsteady on his feet, and nearly crumbed to the ground.

But Adam was too angry right now to be the protective brother he was meant to be. Bree watched in a sort of horror her brother face; one that was matted with anger and filled with distaste.

"Don't ever, talk about Mr. Davenport that way AGAIN!" Adam's voice had reached thundering levels. Bree was pretty sure she saw the ceiling shake. Leo has managed to elude his way past the fighting three somewhere in the squabble and was cowering for cover behind his mission specialist desk.

Adam grabbed his brother by the neck of his lifted him in the air; just like he had when they were little kids. Only this time, it wasn't over a silly struggle concerning who had hidden the TV remote. Everything about this situation screamed something much more important.

Bree couldn't comprehend what was happening. What had gotten into her brother? Sure he beat Chase around a lot; it was kind of their thing. Chase was nerdy and undermined Adam's intelligence; Adam punched back. Literally. But the 'bionic brother toss' was nothing like this. In those fun episodes of brotherly beat-up, Adam's eyes were always filled with an endless myth. There was laughter in everything about him; his eyes, his stance, his stupid comments. It wasn't a cruel laughter, one that enjoyed seeing his brother in pain, but rather a childish, almost reassuring laughter. The kind that you could see he was just happy to be alive and live; happy that he had a brother (now two, with the addition of Leo) that he could have the chance to play with. Even if Chase didn't always see the plus side of these 'play times.'

But there was none of that now. Adam's face had no laughter, no playfulness, no touch of brotherly concern; it was completely devoid of those happy emotions that much more suited him. His face was one of complete seriousness. His eyes were dark with the anger that raged behind them and behind his entire face as a whole. His mouth was a line of rage and when he spoke his words came out like ice in hell; very unexpected, out of place, and honestly, not all that appreciated.

"Mr. Davenport is one of the best people in the world. If you can't see that then you're not the genius you keep claiming to be."

Adam threw his younger brother to the ground. Not hard enough to seriously injure him, Bree realized, but hard enough to make the point that he was _seriously_ ticked.

It was no question whether Chase had been defeated or not. He lay on the floor of the lab, his blue plaid shirt slightly stretched in the back from where Adam had used it like a suitcase handle, and his hair had lost its usual cocky spike; settling instead for a beaten, flat look across his temple.

"Ouch! What was that for?!" exclaimed Chase in an irritated tone. No matter how often this occurrence took place, he would still never settle for "Adam being Adam" as the only logical explanation to the cause. He always wanted more clarification on the matter and this time, for once in his life, he actually got it.

Adam leaned over his younger brother in a powerful, almost threatening position.

"It for you being so ungrateful to the man that did so much for us. He saved our _lives._ He cared about us and wanted something more for us then to be turned into powerful, evil bionic weapons of madness. You have no idea how hard it was for him to turn away his own brother for _our_ good; then only a week later to find out his brother had been killed."

The look on Adam's face as he spoke these words was one of a respected teacher; a mentor. One who was trying desperately to get a very difficult student to understand what he was saying.

"Adam, what are you talking about?" asked Chase, confusion marring his features. "Donald's brother isn't dead; we just saw him last week, remember? He's fine."

"But he wasn't always." Adam's tone suggested he had just released a family secret. His demeanor hit Leo and Bree with a feeling for foreshadowing; and for Bree, especially; it brought back a tidal wave of old memories.

"I don't get it," claimed a very ruffled Chase, using an incredibly crass expression for that of a genius.

But Adam wasn't paying attention to his younger brother anymore. He rounded on his sister. Bree was afraid for a moment until she saw the sad look in her older brother's eye, which had replaced all of his previous anger.

"You remember, don't you Bee-Bee?"

The use of her old childhood nickname brought tears to Bree's eyes.

"I remember…Mr. Davenport being really upset about something…" She paused, not sure whether what she was remembering was a coherent memory or an enhancement of her imagination. "Something about his brother…I think. But I can't be sure. It was so long ago…I was only five."

"I was six." cut in Adam. He shot a look down to his brother who was still position on the floor. "You were four. It figures that you wouldn't remember anything. But I remember it all."

"You remember what?" asked Leo, finally coming out from behind his desk as the prospect of learning something new about his step-father dawned.

"I remember the photos. The fire, the rubble, the screaming people running for their lives…" Adam shut his eye for a moment as the painful memories replayed themselves in his mind. When he opened them again, he continued with more force in his speech. "I remember the moment Mr. Davenport found out. His own brother had been in those towers…his own brother-who he had thrown out of Davenport Industries the week before-had been crushed by a similar reflection of his own sadistic nature. Left to burn and die with no hope of being saved. Along with hundreds of other innocent souls."

"Are-are you talking about 9/11?" asked Leo in an incredulous voice. "Douglas was in 9/11?"

"Yes." answered Bree before Adam could. "He was there…but he escaped. He left everyone think that he had been killed in the towers so he could continue to work on his plan for revenge in peace. He left his family members behind with the tragedy heavy on their hearts and allowed himself to be swirled up into the world of evil while his body was lost among the countless charred corpses of the attack."

Chase had made his way to his feet by now.

"Wow. Um…that must have been hard on…on…" Leo drifted off, not really sure what to say.

But Adam did.

"On Mr. Davenport? Yes, yes it was. So hard, in fact, that he never truly recovered. The day pushed him to make a promise to himself of one thing he never thought he'd have to do until much later in his life; he was going to take care of us as his children, and raise us in a safe environment, away from all the evil in the world. And he was going to train us to become superheroes. So one day, the pain that ate him away from his brother's death wouldn't have to affect someone else's life. Because we could be there to stop evil on their doorstep. To race into the collapsing twin towers and be willing to give our lives to save as many people as we could. He knew he couldn't stop all the evil in the world; but he hoped that if he raised us the right way—on the path of good-we could make a difference to the world one day."

The depth of Adam's speech affected all of them deeply. They had never heard him speak with such conviction and with such power; it would be lying to say it hadn't caught them all a little off guard.

Chase, of course, was the one most affected. He had never been corrected before; he was a bionic genius! But the gravity of his brother's truth and the realization that he had made a horrible mistake made his mind whirl and his stomach churn.

In a speed to match Bree's, he hurried over to the elevator and pressed the button, which promptly lit up a bright orange to respond to his touch.

"Where are you going?" Asked Bree.

"To make things right," answered Chase in a determined tone.

The slight 'ding' of the elevator made his presence known to a very flustered Tasha.

She spun around from the dinner she was preparing and jumped slightly in surprised when she saw her second youngest son standing in the entryway of the kitchen.

"Chase! What are you doing up here?"

"I need to talk to Mr. Davenport, where is he?" Under normal circumstances Tasha might have objected someone bargaining in while her husband was sorting out client problems; she knew how much her husband needed to concentrate while he was working. But the urgency in her son's voice told her when he had to say was more important then sciency gadgets and gizmos.

"In the back office," she answered without hesitation.

Chase nodded his thanks and dashed around to the back office. He let himself in and stood quietly, waiting fro his father to notice him.

It was a cozy office, smaller then the lab or Donald's main work office, but it held a certain charm to it. The stacks and stacks of books piled haphazardly on the mahogany bookshelves conveyed a surprisingly opposite effect on the viewer then one might imagine. With their shiny covers and incredible propositions for intuitive and in some cases, outlandish technological advancements spoke of great advancement and incredible achievement. The small desks and coffee tables scattered about the room where piled with inventions and hundreds of lab books; filled with invaluable data and observations. The entire essence of the room simply reeked with scientific advancement; not exactly the feeling you would expect from a small brown office filled with bookshelves.

Donald looked up from his notebook when he sensed someone was watching him. A look of disappointment settled within the cresses of his face, which left Chase with a feeling of guilt.

"What do you want, Chase?" asked the tech mogul in a tired voice, setting aside his book and pencil and rubbing his eyes. Once his pupils had refocused on his son, Chase began to speak.

Now Chase hadn't really come up with a target plan for this moment; he had kind of just hoped he could wing it. He knew he had wronged his father, and he wanted to fix his mistake. But he wasn't really sure _how._

Finally, after a lot of internal debate, his final decision made its way out of his mouth.

"I-I'm really sorry." Well that wasn't the large, emotional speech Chase had been hoping for. Why, when in the face of a possible faltering relationship with the man who had cared for him for most of his life, was his large intellectual vocabulary and genius intuition failing him now?

But as he saw he had his father's rapt attention, the words came more easily.

"I'm sorry for doubting you, and all that you've done for us. I understand it must have been hard for you after your brother's death; being left with not only a company to single-handily run but also three bionic kids to raise. I shouldn't have repaid all that you did for us with snappy remarks and distrust. I'm sorry for doubting that you ever did the right thing."

Short and sweet. That was how scientists liked it, right? Get all the information into as few words as possible so you could move onto new things and explore different horizons.

Donald didn't need a three-page Shakespearian monologue from his son. It felt good to know that he was appreciated, regardless the amount of words used.

"You know why I did it, didn't you?"

The simple question could be referring to any of a great verge of subjects, but Chase felt he understood them all well enough to nod.

Donald felt a slight smile lighting his face. "Thank-you Chase. It's good to know you understand. I love you and your brother and sister very much."

"Chase nodded again. "I know," he whispered quietly, before turning around and exiting the advanced office.

Chase knew why his father had done what he had done. Davenport didn't need to go into an elaborate speech to get his point across. He understood what his father had done, and he understood what he had to go on and do now to make that all worth it.

Mr. Davenport had sacrificed so much for them. Douglas must have created them but he didn't stick around and care for them the way Mr. Davenport had. He had saved them and loved them. He had raised them as his own; and trained them to he heroes.

So what if he wasn't the perfect father, who was? He had done his best, and now it was Chase's turn to repay him. He had his siblings had to do _their_ best. Their best to train hard so they could become as mission-ready as possible. So they could go out into the world in mist a crisis and make a difference in someone's life; so that they wouldn't have to endure the same pain and separation the damaged entrepreneur had been put through.

So that they might be able to deliver someone form the heart-wrenching evil that existed in the world. Everything that the Davenport team existed for could be summed up in three numbers.

911

Chase could feel a certain satisfaction about this thought.

Short and sweet. That was how he liked it.

On Monday at class Bree was especially alert as Mr. Bernstien droned on about 9/11. It had been a horrible part of American history and had delivered so much pain and agony to so many families. Including her own.

Now that she had a personal connection to the subject matter, recent history had a certain intrigue to it. Nine and Eleven were two numbers that together made Twenty. They were simple when you looked at math, but held so much more depth when you applied it to your life.

Nine. The powers that they had. Speed, Strength, Smarts, Laser vision, Blast wave, Telkensises, Levitation, Super Senses, and Vocal Manipulation. Their current total of powers. The powers that their biological father had given them, and the ones they had unlocked on heir own. They were a part of them; and a part that they needed to use to help people, a bring good into the world.

Eleven. The years that Donald had been their father. The years that Donald lived with the pain of his brother's death. The years that they had been ignorant of the world and of the pain it offered to all influenced by it. The number eleven stood for their quiet, ignorant family who lived in seemingly harmony with a secret pain beneath them all. Until Marcus showed up.

She didn't know it yet but soon there would be a Twenty. The number of days they disbanded the team. The days in which they could ruin their father's hopes and dreams for them. In those twenty days, they would once again forget the bond of family. The meaning of what it meant to be heroes and the importance of their duties to the world. They would have to be re-reminded of their mission in this world and the responsibility to the team. But they would return to their duty. Their duty always called, and they would always return.

All of these numbers added up to what they stood for. Bree knew this wasn't the end of evil. Them being in this dimension and going on missions to save lives was hardly enough to take down all the villains and psychopaths out there.

But they could make a difference. And they could save innocent people from cruel acts against them. And they were going to try their best to do that as much as possible.

And with all this newfound appreciation for the depth of 9/11, Bree had the feeling she was going to ace this next exam.


End file.
